For every $1 put toward sports betting. As federal and state guidelines have loosened, fewer Americans are investing in stocks and other safer assets. This past January, folks put $14 billion into online sports betting — compare that to $1.1 billion in January 2019.
Study: AI beats people at picking stocks - But there’s a catch
Have you ever heard about Burton Malkiel, author of “A Random Walk Down Wall Street?” He proclaimed that a blindfolded monkey tossing darts at the financial section of a newspaper could select a portfolio that would do just as well as one chosen by experts.
Now, what if that monkey was going up against artificial intelligence? Here’s a twist for your 401K and retirement plans: Chatbots like ChatGPT are better at picking stocks than humans. (Matt, my Morgan Stanley man, if you are reading this, let’s talk on Monday.)
Don’t be mean, be above average
Yes, AI beats humans. According to a new study, researchers asked ChatGPT to pick stocks based on criteria average investors find important — like “grows in value” and “not a total disaster.”
It picked a collection of companies, and they actually gained value. The 10 leading investments, on average, lost value during the same 2023 timeframe. Check this out — another study showed ChatGPT is better at predicting future stock prices than some expensive software planners currently use. Whoa.
Does that mean you should trust your investments (or investments-to-be) to a chatbot? Not exactly.
Ask a fund manager …
And they’d tell you something like this was coming. Investment managers have been using AI, aka “robo-advisors” (yeah, I got a kick out of that) for years to help predict and choose stocks.
Financial planners are quick to say that consumers shouldn’t let chatbots make investment decisions for them — but that’s what they would say, right? Are they just afraid of losing their jobs? The truth is more complicated.
There’s no AI ‘silver bullet’
Asking a chatbot directly for a stock pick is still rolling the dice. It’s like going on Reddit or Google and typing in “best stock ever.” And financial planners have tested this, too. The more parameters you feed ChatGPT — like a portfolio with a certain amount of equity or risk — the more mistakes the chatbot seems to make.
An expert can use chatbots like this to gather tons of info very quickly or get useful summaries to help make decisions. But in the hands of an amateur, complete reliance on AI is less like “The Wolf of Wall Street” and more like … well, the end of “The Wolf of Wall Street,” minus the crimes.
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270,315 printer cartridges
How much HP’s CEO earned in 2023. Poor Enrique Lores got a 7% pay cut — which still comes to $19.46 million in pay, stocks and perks. HP says his actual take-home was $12,858,597. So, he’s fine.
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The good news is that there are ways to help make ends meet, even during the holidays. Tap or click here for 10 ways to make extra money online.
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